From Population Bomb to Ethanol Mandates

Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

When I was in college around 1970, one of the books that shaped how many thought about the future was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The central fear then was stark and urgent: humanity was growing faster than the planet’s ability to feed itself. Mass starvation, we were told, was not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty unless something changed.

Whether Ehrlich’s predictions would prove right or wrong is beside the point. What mattered was the anxiety that framed the era. Food was precious. Arable land was finite. Population growth threatened to overwhelm fragile systems. Feeding people was the overriding concern.   

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture has shifted in ways I never would have imagined back then. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. And yet hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure, many of them acutely so. Hunger has not disappeared; it has simply become chronic, unevenly distributed, and easier to ignore unless it erupts into crisis.

At the same time, something else has happened—something that strikes me as strange. Vast amounts of productive farmland, particularly in the United States, are no longer devoted primarily to feeding people, but to growing corn that is converted into ethanol. This ethanol is then blended into gasoline—not to replace it, but to dilute it. We are using food-producing land, water, fertilizer, and energy to marginally extend a fuel supply, all in the name of energy independence.

This is where the dissonance creeps in.

I’ve written before about the ethanol debate and the political enthusiasm that surrounded it, especially after the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Ethanol was sold as a clean, patriotic solution to foreign oil dependence. And once embraced, it quickly became politically untouchable. Powerful agricultural and industrial interests ensured that mandates stayed in place, even as questions mounted about ethanol’s true energy balance and environmental benefits.

But step back from the technical arguments for a moment and look at the larger picture. We once worried that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now we grow food to burn it. This is weird to me. 

I don’t mean that as a slogan or a condemnation. It’s simply an observation—one that feels increasingly difficult to square with the world as it is. In many parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food insecurity is not theoretical. It shapes daily life. It fuels migration, political instability, and despair. And yet it rarely stays in our media spotlight for long. Hunger that is constant does not make for compelling headlines.

What we see instead are debates about fuel blends, mileage standards, and subsidy structures—important questions, perhaps, but questions that often unfold in isolation from broader human consequences.

None of this suggests that biofuels are inherently evil, or that farmers are villains, or that energy transitions are unnecessary. It does suggest, however, that priorities can drift in subtle ways. Policies designed for one moment can harden into assumptions, even when the conditions that gave rise to them have changed.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not the existence of ethanol mandates, but how little we seem to reflect on their implications.* We live in a world where hunger persists alongside abundance, where farmland feeds engines while people go without, and where the moral weight of those choices is rarely discussed.

Back in 1970, we were taught to fear a future defined by scarcity. Today, the problem looks different. It is not that we lack resources. It's that we struggle to decide what they are for. And that, to my mind, is a far more troubling question.

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When I considered the title for this post I was tempted to replace the word Mandates with Madness. I left it as is because I didn't want to be accused of having a clickbait title. The topic is too important to be trivial about it.

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IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

*Another negative feature of blending ethanol into gasoline has to with how it damages small engines due to "phase separation." Phase separation in ethanol-blended gasoline occurs when the ethanol absorbs moisture from the air or environment, causing the fuel to split into two layers: a water-ethanol mixture at the bottom and pure gasoline on top. This happens more readily in humid conditions or during long storage periods.

            The problem for small engines, like those in lawnmowers, chainsaws, or boats, is that the watery layer can corrode metal parts, clog fuel lines, and cause starting issues or engine failure. The separated gasoline lacks octane, leading to poor performance and premature death. Using ethanol-free fuel or specialized additives helps prevent this damage, but you seldom hear anyone talking about this.

The Ethanol Fallacy: A 2025 Update

The Ethanol Fallacy
January 22, 2008

Public domain

The February 2008 issue of Popular Mechanics features a challenging story by editor James B. Meigs called The Ethanol Fallacy. Unless you’ve been sleeping in a cave for two decades, you’ve undoubtedly been aware of the ongoing debates regarding the best way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A wide range of technologies has been evaluated from solar and wind energy to hydrogen power and fuel cells. Since transportation eats up the lion’s share of our energy use, much of the debate centers on how to power our cars and trucks.

Unfortunately, writes Meigs, the best solutions may not be getting the attention they deserve. Washington politicians have bought the “ethanol solution” hook, line and sinker.

Politicians have been falling all over themselves to prove their commitment to energy independence. The bill they have been crafting and carving has as its moniker the title “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.” No longer just an energy bill, it is a security matter, giving it a special reverence. According to Meigs, the 2008 presidential candidates “have outdone each other with vows to flood the nation with ever-increasing rivers of ethanol for at least a generation.”

It’s what our politicians love to do, of course. Take action fast. Look like a leader. Problem is, “shoot first, ask questions later” is a silly way to approach these kinds of issues.

The average person who votes is not really that knowledgeable about these matters, which gives the ethanol lobbyists a leg up. The truth is, it takes energy to make energy. The article points out that growing corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, a product of natural gas, and chemical herbicides, made mostly from oil. The heavy machinery that harvests these 93 million acres of corn all require diesel fuel and lubricants, as do the trucks that transport all this corn. According to one Cornell researcher, it takes more than a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. Now what’s that all about? How does this reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

There’s something corny about this ethanol business. As I have always suspected, and which the author here is not afraid to point out, the big winners are companies like Archer Daniels Midland whose lobbyists labor night and day in those corridors of power inside the beltway. And for who’s benefit? Not yours or mine.

So what can we do about it? Not sure, really. Any suggestions?

The Ethanol Fallacy, Revisited 2025.

Photo: Farm Progress

It's been 17 years since I penned the above piece and, if anything, the ethanol saga has only grown more entrenched—and more problematic. Back in 2008, the Energy Independence and Security Act was the shiny new toy, mandating a ramp-up to 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022, with corn ethanol as the star. Politicians from both parties hailed it as a win for energy security, rural economies, and the environment. But as the Popular Mechanics piece I referenced warned, it was a rushed fix, propped up by lobbying muscle from agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). 

Fast-forward to today, and the "rivers of ethanol" promised by those 2008 presidential candidates have become a flood—one that's drowning common sense in subsidies, environmental strain, and higher grocery bills.

Let's start with the numbers on corn, which is the heart of the original critique. In 2007, about 14% of the U.S. corn crop—roughly 2.05 billion bushels out of 14.5 billion total—went to ethanol production. Fast-forward to the 2023-24 crop year, and that figure has ballooned to a staggering 5.45 billion bushels, or nearly 45% of the total harvest. That's enough corn to fill over 200,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, diverted from food, feed, and exports to chase the biofuel dream. 

Some reports even peg it higher when including co-products like distillers grains used in animal feed, pushing the effective share past 50% for biofuel and alcohol combined. Meanwhile, total U.S. corn production hit a record 15.2 billion bushels in 2023, but the ethanol slice keeps growing—projected to hold steady at 5.45 billion bushels for 2024-25. Farmers love the demand (and the prices it props up), but at what cost to the rest of us?

What's weird to me is how Paul Ehrlich in his bestseller The Popular Bomb (1968) stated the global food supply would not be able to keep up with much more population growth. The world population was 3.5 billion then. Now we're over 8 billion people and instead of using farming to provide food we're using it for fuel. What's with that?

The energy math hasn't improved either. That Cornell researcher I quoted in 2008 nailed it: it still takes roughly a gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of corn ethanol. Recent analyses peg the energy return on investment (EROI) at just 1.04:1 for corn-based ethanol—meaning you get back barely more energy than you put in, and that's being generous. 

For context, gasoline clocks in at 8:1 or better; even tar sands beat ethanol at 4:1. No wonder critics call ethanol a "net energy sink" for society—it's like running on a treadmill to power your house. And the environmental toll? Corn ethanol's full lifecycle emissions (including fertilizer runoff, soil erosion, and methane from processing) often make it as dirty as—or dirtier than—regular gasoline, especially when indirect land-use changes like deforestation abroad are factored in. It's led to toxic algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, higher water bills for Midwest communities, and a "food vs. fuel" dilemma that's jacked up global prices for everything from tortillas to turkey.

So why is nobody talking about this!!!!

Policy-wise, the machine keeps humming. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), that 2007 mandate, is still law, with EPA-set volumes ticking up: 21.87 billion gallons of total renewable fuel in 2024 and 22.68 billion in 2025, much of it corn ethanol. Direct blender's tax credits may have expired in 2011, but they've been replaced by a subsidy buffet. The new Clean Fuel Production Credit (Section 45Z), kicking in fully in 2025, dangles up to $1 per gallon for low-emission biofuels—potentially costing taxpayers $8.5 billion in FY2031 alone. Add in $3.2 billion in direct farm subsidies for corn in 2024 (30% of all commodity crop aid), and it's clear the lobbyists are still earning their keep. ADM and peers aren't complaining: the industry pumped out a record 16 billion gallons of ethanol in 2024, supporting 370,000 jobs and $30 billion in inputs—but mostly in rural pockets, while urban families foot the bill through higher feed costs and pump prices.

So, has anything changed for the better? Some might say there are a few positive glimmers in the data. Exports hit 1.91 billion gallons in 2024, easing some domestic pressure, and there's buzz around "second-generation" ethanol from waste or algae, which could sidestep the food fight, though it's years from scaling, and I'll believe i when I see it. (I suspect I will be dead before then.) Electric vehicles are finally denting the transportation pie—EVs made up 7.6% of new car sales in 2023, up from zilch in 2008—and wind/solar now outpace ethanol in renewable energy growth. But corn ethanol clings on, a relic of that "shoot first" era.

What can we do? Demand better. Will Congress be open to reforming the RFS toward truly sustainable biofuels. Better yet, vote with your wallet—seek out E0 (ethanol-free) gas if your state allows. The fallacy isn't just corny anymore; it's costly. Time to harvest smarter solutions before we ethanol-ize our way into a bigger mess. 

What do you think—still buying the hype? 

Two Things I've Heard All My Life That Don't Make Sense

Even though we're closer to Armageddon than we were 50 years ago, somehow it seemed like the real "Armageddon Fever" took place a half century ago. Maybe it was Hal Lindsey's 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth that stimulated the subsequent firestorm of pop-Apocalyptic lit. Or maybe it was simply the turbulence of the times--assassinations, Viet Nam, cities burning--that spawned the belief that humanity was doomed.

While Christians were reading about the end of the world and looking for their Lord's return, secular readers were engaged with books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and doomsaying by groups like the Club of Rome. And let's not forget the angst generated by the somewhat intangible, though ever present, threat of nuclear holocaust as presented in books like On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

From those times to the present I've observed a few statements by pundits that never seem to go away. They may lay dormant for a season or two, but pretty soon they are being recycled again.

The first: In 10 years we will be out of oil.
This declaration was always accompanied by hand wringing about oil running out and the need to cut our dependence on oil. The latter is noble, though when I was young the statement emphasized cutting our dependence on foreign oil. There is so much oil under U.S. soil that you can't even imagine it. For some reason this off limits and that is off limit and those folks should be permitted to use their oil rigs and that pipeline has to be shut.... Bottom Line: It's empty rhetoric.

The real moral of this story is: Repeating silly pronouncements with specific dates or numbers will diminish your credibility

The second: There are too many people to feed. The world can't sustain any more.
In 1960, the population of the world was 3 billion. By 1974 it had grown to 4 billion. As of this moment, August 2023, there are 8 billion people populating our planet. 

Paul Ehrlich's book predicted mass starvation of the global population by the end of the 70s. 

What I remember most is that despite the troubling rise in population, technology was also advancing to make production of food more efficient and human life sustainable.

Now here's what I don't understand. After decades of handwringing about not being able to feed the world population as it grows, these very same people are diverting food crops for ethanol. And they are eliminating cattle in the Netherlands because of flatulence. (Ireland and Canada are pushing 30% cuts as well.) And I just heard that even more cropland is being eliminated for solar panel farms.

What happened to the concern about hunger?

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

Sometime around 20 to 25 years ago Popular Science magazine had a detailed breakdown of the costs and benefits of turning corn into ethanol for car fuel. By the time you grow the corn, harvest it, transport it, convert it, distribute it.... There has been absolutely no gain. It uses up as much energy to create ethanol as the net gain from using it. In short, it is a waste.

Here's something else they don't tell you. E-10 gasoline (E-10 means 10% ethanol) can cause damage to small engines if not handled properly. It's too technical for this blog post, but you can look into it. The problem is called "phase separation." 

So what does our Minnesota leadership do? They are now pushing the use of E-15 instead of E-10. Moving forward with ethanol is ridiculous. Lawmakers close their ears to the experts who point out the silliness here. First, ethanol can damage older engines because it is a solvent which can dissolve some of the plastics, metals and rubber components used in older engines. Second, it has a lower energy content than gasoline. The result is lower fuel economy, the exact opposite of the increasingly stringent fuel economy objectives pressed by the EPA through CAFE regs. Third, because ethanol evaporates more easily than gasoline, it can contribute to smog formation. So why is Governor Walz celebrating the increased use of E15?

Why are we decreasing food production to increase production of a form of fuel that is less efficient and creates more smog? Whatever happened to all that concern about not being able to feed the masses?

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A couple stats about corn in Minnesota. According to the USDA, Minnesota farmers planted 8.5 million acres of corn in 2021. 31% of this corn crop was used for ethanol. That's slightly more than all the acres used for cities, towns and roads in Minnesota. 

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It's time to take a walk.

Ethanol and the World Food Shortage

Over the years I’ve often observed and noted that the food crises in most countries are not due to lack of capability, but from political decisions. It turned out that the starvation in Ethiopia a few decades ago (we all saw ads featuring children with bloated bellies, but without explanation of causes) was due to Communists deliberately starving the people into submission. There is plenty of capacity to feed everyone in the world. Our political and economic systems prevent the poor and starving from obtaining their daily sustenance.

Tragically, we are today experiencing tremendous upheavals in food production, primarily due to our own political interventions. The intentions may be good on the part of legislators, but the ramifications have not been thought through, even though they appear obvious to many. The decision to convert huge portions of U.S. farmland from food production to ethanol/energy production is a vivid example of the law of unintended circumstances, as the following article outlines.

"Silent Famine" Sweeps Globe

WASHINGTON – From India to Africa to North Korea to Pakistan and even in New York City, higher grain prices, fertilizer shortages and rising energy costs are combining to spell hunger for millions in what is being characterized as a global "silent famine."

Global food prices, based on United Nations records, rose 35 percent in the last year, escalating a trend that began in 2002. Since then, prices have risen 65 percent.

Last year, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's world food index, dairy prices rose nearly 80 percent and grain 42 percent.

"This is the new face of hunger," said Josetta Sheeran, director of the World Food Program, launching an appeal for an extra $500 million so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million hungry people this year. "People are simply being priced out of food markets. ... We have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach."

The WFP launched a public appeal weeks ago because the price of the food it buys to feed some of the world's poorest people had risen by 55 percent since last June. By the time the appeal began last week, prices had risen a further 20 percent. That means WFP needs $700 million to bridge the gap between last year's budget and this year's prices. The numbers are expected to continue to rise.

The crisis is widespread and the result of numerous causes – a kind of "perfect storm" leading to panic in many places:

* In Thailand, farmers are sleeping in their fields because thieves are stealing rice, now worth $600 a ton, right out of the paddies.

* Four people were killed in Egypt in riots over subsidized flour that was being sold for profit on the black market.

* There have been food riots in Morocco, Senegal and Cameroon.

* Mexico's government is considering lifting a ban on genetically modified crops, to allow its farmers to compete with the United States.

* Argentina, Kazakhstan and China have imposed restrictions to limit grain exports and keep more of their food at home.

* Vietnam and India, both major rice exporters, have announced further restrictions on overseas sales.

* Violent food protests hit Burkina Faso in February.

* Protesters rallied in Indonesia recently, and media reported deaths by starvation.

* In the Philippines, fast-food chains were urged to cut rice portions to counter a surge in prices.

* Millions of people in India face starvation after a plague of rats overruns a region, as they do cyclically every 50 years.

* Officials in Bangladesh warn of an emerging "silent famine" that threatens to ravage the region.

According to some experts, the worst damage is being done by government mandates and subsidies for "biofuels" that supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. Thirty percent of this year's U.S. grain harvest will go to ethanol distilleries. The European Union, meanwhile, has set a goal of 10 percent bio-fuels for all transportation needs by 2010."

A huge amount of the world's farmland is being diverted to feed cars, not people," writes Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist.

He notes that in six of the past seven years the human race has consumed more grain than it grew. World grain reserves last year were only 57 days, down from 180 days a decade ago.

One in four bushels of corn from this year's U.S. crop will be diverted to make ethanol, according to estimates."

Turning food into fuel for cars is a major mistake on many fronts," said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental group based in Washington. "One, we're already seeing higher food prices in the American supermarket. Two, perhaps more serious from a global perspective, we're seeing higher food prices in developing countries where it's escalated as far as people rioting in the streets."

Palm oil is also at record prices because of biofuel demands. This has created shortages in Indonesia and Malaysia, where it is a staple.

Nevertheless, despite the recognition that the biofuels industry is adding to a global food crisis, the ethanol industry is popular in the U.S. where farmers enjoy subsidies for the corn crops.

Source: The "Silent Famine" Copyright 2008, WorldNet Daily

The Ethanol Fallacy

The February issue of Popular Mechanics features a challenging story by editor James B. Meigs called The Ethanol Fallacy. Unless you’ve been sleeping in a cave for two decades, you’ve undoubtedly been aware of the ongoing debates regarding the best way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A wide range of technologies has been evaluated from solar and wind energy to hydrogen power and fuel cells. Since transportation eats up the lion’s share of our energy use, much of the debate centers on how to power our cars and trucks.

Unfortunately, writes Meigs, the best solutions may not be getting the attention they deserve. Washington politicians have bought the “ethanol solution” hook, line and sinker.

Politicians have been falling all over themselves to prove their commitment to energy independence. The bill they have been crafting and carving has as kits moniker the title “Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.” No longer just an energy bill, it is a security matter, giving it a special reverence. According to Meigs, this year’s presidential candidates “have outdone each other with vows to flood the nation with ever-increasing rivers of ethanol for at least a generation.”

It’s what our politicans love to do, of course. Take action fast. Look like a leader. Problem is, “shoot first, ask questions later” is a silly way to approach these kinds of issues.

The average person who votes is not really that knowledgeable about these matters, which gives the ethanol lobbyists a leg up. The truth is, it takes energy to make energy. The article points out that growing corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, a product of natural gas, and chemical herbicides, made mostly from oil. The heavy machinery that harvests these 93 million acres of corn all require diesel fuel and lubricants, as do the trucks that transport all this corn. According to one Cornell researcher, it takes more than a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol? Now what’s that all about? How does this reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

There’s something corny about this ethanol business. As I have always suspected, and which the author here is not afraid to point out, the big winners are companies like Archer Daniels Midland whose lobbyists labor night and day in those corridors of power inside the beltway. And for who’s benefit? Not yours or mine.

So what can we do about it? Not sure, really. Any suggestions?